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Misery
"You look like quite a fighter. But at this juncture, you're proving yourself rather a nuisance. Shall we settle this?" —Misery Misery is a character from the indie game and recent Wii port Cave Story. She was introduced as an NPC and antagonist working unwillingly for the game's primary villain, The Doctor. Misery's player is the same as Aribeth, and switched to her from her former account as Daryl in July of 2011 just after returning from hiatus. Background Misery's age, due to her unknown past and her magical powers, is difficult to determine. What is known is that she is the daughter of the witch-woman Jenka who lives in the Sand Zone of the floating island in which Cave Story takes place, and that Misery is likely not her real name. She was raised by Jenka but little has ever been revealed of her childhood or youth, other than Jenka taught her witchcraft and that Misery was an exceptional student, taking to her mother's skill with great zeal and success. Some time into her adulthood, Misery tapped into the powers of her mad imprisoned uncle, Ballos, as part of a magical rite to create an object of great power - the Demon Crown. While the process was successful, there was an unfortunate backlash: Ballos's immense magical strength and insanity bound the Crown to his existence and Misery's will to the Crown itself, forcing her to serve anyone who wore it. Misery, along with her companion Balrog who was likewise bound, was compelled to obey the Crown's four owners, and apparently placed inside a stasis bubble when the Crown was unclaimed. The fifth and final owner, The Doctor, used Misery and Balrog as his main assault force in his attempt to conquer the island and use it as a base for his conquest of the world below; his defeat by the infiltration cyborg Quote freed Misery from his service, though not until after the Doctor had directly controlled and malformed her into a mindless magical killing machine in a last-ditch effort to prevent his own destruction. Luckily, his defeat and the subsequent death of Ballos himself both returned her to her natural form and destroyed the Demon Crown for good. Free to do as she will for the first time in immeasurable years, Misery was last seen standing on the balcony of the Doctor's tower on the floating island's surface, watching the sun set in the distance. During this observation, she spotted a strange anomaly floating in the island's wake - a Tear in space-time. When she approached to investigate, the Rift pulled Misery through and into the Multiverse, leaving her drained and disoriented on the dusty surface of the Moon. Involvement Misery's arrival to the Multiverse was at best inconvenient for the witch. Shortly after being defeated by Quote and freed from the Demon Crown's curse, she was pulled into a Rift into the Multiverse and dropped unceremoniously in the middle of the Sea of Moondust. Disoriented and drained, Misery wandered for some time before collapsing from exhaustion. She eventually revived, but would likely have died if she had not been found by Briar Rose and escorted to the medical facilities at the Tower of Twilight. There her injuries were tended, and she learned that much of the exhaustion she felt was due to the Multiverse's power-draining nature. Shortly after, Misery relocated to the Lunar Flotilla and sought an inexpensive residency on a low-class vessel, explicitly for the purposes of having a shady, subdued place to practice her craft. The location she chose had a surprising resonance, however, and even before she could begin her work it attracted the attention of two nightmarish entities that shared Misery's love for and attunement to the power of shadow and fear - the Nightmaren Reala and the living horror Darkrai. Whether anything comes of their meeting remains to be seen. Misery encountered a shady merchant on the Lunar Flotilla, who convinced her to purchase a ball he claimed contained a monstrous servant. While it cost nearly all her funds, the ball contained a Zubat which became Misery's first soldier. The idea of Pokemon - powerful monsters that somehow can be contained within mechanical orbs and rendered completely loyal - intrigues her, and she plans to make a journey to their home world to investigate them further. Misery later traveled to the Sea of Moondust to perform a ritual attempting to re-establish some of her lost magical power. Her witchcraft was capable of drawing power from the alignments of the stars, but the unfamiliar sky of the Multiverse had denied her the intimate understanding of the celestial voids that she had possessed back on her home world. While there she encountered the shapeshifter Flea; their discussion quickly spiraled into what appears to be a building rivalry between two differing practices and methods of similar forms of dark magic. Personality Misery is true to her name - curt, blunt, and sardonic, seemingly having little sense of humor outside the macabre or mocking. She rarely smiles except when removing an annoyance or facing an engaging challenge, and otherwise speaks blandly and without expression. She is obviously very intelligent, and often goes out of her way to disparage those of lesser intellect, such as her companion Balrog. She has expressed extreme frustration with the state the Multiverse's drain has placed her in, but she makes a point of remaining civil - not only because it's more likely to leave her alive than being rude would be, but because she has a reputation to remake and uphold. Powers and Capabilities Misery was an expert at using magic. With seemingly very little effort, she could hover, fly, and teleport of herself and others; prior to entering the Multiverse, she was almost never seen walking, when she touched the ground she did so only to stand still, then returned to the air whenever she needed to move again. She could conjure items and creatures at will, often calling up large heavy stones or blocks to drop on her enemies or attacking them with summoned animals. She could, and still can, fire energy waves and bolts of black lightning, and surround herself in a barrier of magical spheres as a defensive mechanism. She appears to have a knack for creating magic items, with her crafting of the Demon Crown as the most definitive example. As a contrast, Misery appears to be physically frail, relying on evasive or defensive measures to protect her from attack and falling quickly when heavily abused. She has little physical strength, relying completely on her magic for offense and defense, and likely would be unable to do more than minor harm - if that much - if forced to engage in direct hand-to-hand combat. Quotes Trivia *Misery is very likely not her real name, and such is implied in Cave Story: Jenka, Misery's mother, never refers to her as Misery, instead just calling her "that girl" or "my daughter". Her player has a true identity in mind, but is keeping it secret for now. *The comments about Misery's hair color constantly changing is a reference to the fact that her game sprite, game portrait, and game art have different colors for her hair, not to mention various different kinds of fanart. This is corrected in the Wii version, but her player has never played it. *Misery is the only Cave Story character on the forum. The current player is the second person to play Misery on CRRP. External Links *Misery's Cauldron (Storage Topic) Category:Player Characters Category:Dropped Characters